China
has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming
western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and
diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S.
maritime zones.

The strategy is a Chinese version of
what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and
“contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama
administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls
for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that
are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that
region.

“The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot to
the Pacific’ with their own elegant countermoves,” said John Tkacik, a
former State Department Asia hand.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to question President Barack Obama about the U.S. pivot during the summit meeting
set to begin Friday afternoon in California. Chinese state-run media
have denounced the new U.S. policy as an effort to “contain” China and
limit its growing power.

The Chinese strategy is
highlighted by Xi’s current visit to Trinidad, Costa Rica, and Mexico
where he announced major loans of hundreds of millions of dollars that
analysts say is part of buying influence in the hemisphere.

U.S.
officials say the visit to the region has several objectives, including
seeking to bolster Chinese arms sales to the region amid efforts by
Russian arms dealers to steal market share.

States
including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico recently purchased
Chinese arms but are said to be unhappy with the arms’ low quality. For
example, Chinese YLC radar sold to Ecuador in 2009 did not work properly
and sales of Chinese tanks to Peru also ran into quality problems. Both
states are now looking to buy Russian weaponry, a U.S. official said.

Venezuela, a key oil-producing U.S. adversary, announced Thursday that China agreed to a $4 billion loan for oil development.

And
in Mexico this week, Xi announced China is extending a $1 billion line
of credit for oil development and pledged another $1 billion trade deal.

A
joint Mexico-China statement said Mexico pledged not to interfere in
China’s affairs on Taiwan and Tibet, a reference to the previous
government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon who in 2011 invited
exiled Tibetan leader the Dalia Lama, a move that angered Beijing.

U.S.
officials say there are concerns that the pro-Beijing shift by the
current government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who visited
China in April, will be exploited by China for such political goals, and
could be used to generate support for China’s claims to Japan’s Senkaku
Islands.

U.S. officials said there are growing fears that some type of military confrontation
could break out between China and Japan over the disputed islands that
are said to contain large underwater gas and oil reserves.

North
of the U.S. border, Canada this week concluded a military cooperation
agreement with China during the visit to Beijing by Canadian Defense
Minister Peter G. Mackay. The agreement calls for closer cooperation
between the two militaries, including bilateral military exchanges.

Chinese
ambassador to Canada Zhang Junsai said China is deepening ties to
Canada for infrastructure development, in Calgary last month. Chinese
state-run companies have spent $30 billion for Canadian oil sands and
natural gas, he said.

At a security conference in
Singapore last month, the commander of U.S. military forces in the
Pacific, Adm. Samuel Locklear, confirmed the earlier disclosure by a
Chinese military officer that China’s military has been conducting naval
incursions into the 200-mile U.S. Economic Exclusion Zone around U.S.
territory.

The locations of the incursions were not
given but they likely included submarine or warship visits to the
western Pacific island of Guam, a key U.S. military base.

A
Chinese military official initially stated at the conference that the
incursions were part of a People’s Liberation Army Navy effort at
“reciprocating” for frequent U.S. Navy transits through China’s 200-mile
EEZs along the coasts. The zones are technically international waters
and China has claimed U.S. transits are “illegal” under international
law.

It is not clear why China is conducting naval operations it considers illegal for its maritime boundaries inside U.S. EEZs.

“They
are, and we encourage their ability to do that,” Locklear said, without
explaining why the activity was encouraged or where the Chinese vessels
had transited.

Larry Wortzel, a former military
intelligence official and specialist on China, said the Chinese military
has sent intelligence collection ships into Guam’s economic zone and
also the zone around the Hawaiian islands.

“The EEZ
transits may indicate that in the future they could revise their
position on the Law of the Sea and military activities,” Wortzel said.

Wortzel said he does not see China’s efforts in South and Central America as a counter to the U.S. Asia pivot.

Chinese arms sales, military exchanges, investment and development has been underway for a decade, he said.

The
Financial Times, which first disclosed the Chinese EEZ forays, quoted
one Chinese military source as saying, “we are considering this as a
practice, and we have tried it out, but we clearly don’t have the
capacity to do this all the time like the U.S. does here.”

On
Chinese inroads in the western hemisphere, Rick Fisher, a China
military affairs analyst, said China is moving strategically on Latin
America, working methodically as part of a decades-long effort to build
economic and political clout there.

“It has cultivated
far better military relations with the openly anti-American regimes in
the region and could become a sort of political-economic godfather to
ensure the survival of the Castro dictatorship system in Cuba,” said
Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

Intelligence
cooperation with Cuba is “substantial,” Fisher says, and will expand
sharply in the region through the activities of its state-run
telecommunications firms such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE in the
region.

China currently is “promoting almost all of its non-nuclear weapons in that region,” Fisher said.

“It
has promoted the Chengdu J-10 4th generation fighter in Venezuela and
Argentina, and even Peru may be considering the J-10 for its future
fighter program,” he said.

A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
At
a recent arms expo in Peru, China was selling a 22,000-ton helicopter
amphibious assault ship and an export version of its relatively advanced
Yuan-class attack submarine.

In Venezuela, China is
helping the Caracas government circumvent U.S. arms embargoes by helping
repair Venezuela’s U.S.-made gas turbine engines on frigates, he said.

“Another
company was marketing several short range ballistic missiles—with no
apparent consideration about how it might promote a regional missile
arms race,” Fisher said. “The basic U.S. policy is to ‘welcome’ China’s
growing influence in Latin America but it is now time for Washington to
use both positive and negative pressures to limit China’s strategic
military reach into this hemisphere.”

“And
if they [Chinese nationals] get in trouble, as they did in Libya in
2011, China’s navy and air forces can coordinate to support them,” he
said. “This support of émigré Chinese communities around the world has
become an overt dictum of China’s new security policy.”

China
also has set up commercial bases in key chokepoints around the
Caribbean, through its Chinese-run port facilities in Panama, Bahamas,
Trinidad, and Venezuela over the past decade.

Tkacik said those facilities are partly aimed at drawing American attention and easing U.S. geopolitical pressure in Asia.

China also is investing heavily in Africa, the Middle East, and Indian Ocean region.

“At
bottom, however, China’s strategic targets are closer to home: East
Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific,” Tkacik said. “That’s why
Washington’s Pivot to the Pacific unsettles Beijing so. It threatens to
check Beijing’s rising new influence in the Asia-Pacific.

Tkacik said Chinese naval patrols in U.S. economic zones have been carried out for years through Chinese ocean fishing fleets.

“It doesn’t need to send out military vessels to Guam or Hawaii or the Aleutians except to ‘tweak’ the U.S.,” he said.SOURCE